Newly issued in the series Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages,
Jane Cartwright's Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality in Medieval
Wales offers an impressive exploration of women and Christianity
in Wales from the "Age of Saints" in the sixth and seventh centuries
through the Reformation. This volume brings together Cartwright's
varied research on female spirituality in medieval Wales, including
revised and expanded (and in the case of the first chapter, newly
presented in English) versions of her previously published studies of
female saints and Welsh nuns. Most notable is the range of sources
Cartwright gathers for examination; in addition to close readings of
written saints' lives and hitherto untranslated Welsh poetry, she
studies holy wells, stained glass, and other visual evidence of
devotion (the 25 color plates include several of her own photographs).
The encyclopedic variety of sources illuminates the Welsh context of
devotion to female saints, outlining the development of their cults
and analyzing, with an emphasis on lay piety, their influence and
importance in medieval Wales.

Cartwright begins her investigation of female sanctity by examining
Welsh devotion to the most influential female saint in medieval
Christianity. Her first chapter traces the history and development of
the Virgin's cult in Wales, emphasizing not a particularly "Welsh"
version of Marian devotion but instead the strong connections between
Welsh texts and practices and their Latin or English parallels.
Devotion to Mary was omnipresent in Wales, as in other parts of
Christendom, and it enjoyed increased fervor after the twelfth
century: Cartwright catalogues churches and holy wells dedicated and
rededicated to the Virgin as well as discussing the many Marian prose
texts that were translated into Middle Welsh between the twelfth and
fifteenth centuries. The author pays especially close attention to
the apocryphal gospels describing Mary's conception and birth and to
the miracles detailing Mary's kindness to women, particularly those
pregnant or in childbirth. She also analyzes several later Middle
Welsh poems dedicated to Mary that utilize the common themes of Mary's
reputation as mankind's mediator, her relationship with her son and
the Trinity as a whole, and her own miraculous birth. Cartwright's
survey of physical evidence for Marian devotion includes visual
representations of shrines throughout Wales, iconography of statues
and illustrations, and records of holy wells dedicated to the Virgin.
Cartwright notes that the tradition includes Mary's paying a visit to
Wales, which places her squarely in the category of local saints so
highly valued by the medieval Welsh.

The women among these local saints constitute the focus of
Cartwright's second chapter, which explores how so many Welsh female
saints could have had active cults in the Middle Ages and still have
left few traces in the historical record. Although universal
Christian saints such as Mary, Katherine, and Margaret enjoyed great
popularity in Wales, Cartwright reminds us that more localized and
unofficial female religious figures played a significant part in
medieval Welsh devotional practices. Demonstrating that a masculinist
scholarly tradition has actively worked to deny both the importance
and the popularity of such Welsh saints as St. Gwenfrewy of Holywell,
St. Melangell, patron saint of hares, and St. Non, mother of St.
David, Cartwright examines Welsh genealogies, vitae, and poetry
to show that locally rooted female saints played a large part in Welsh
devotional practices. Like Mary, these saints were highly valued for
their intercessory powers: healing the sick, helping the distressed,
and guiding petitioners in matters of love and marriage. However,
Cartwright notes, the popular female saints were all reputed to have
lived in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries; clearly Welsh women
of the Middle Ages were not encouraged to take female saints as role
models and pursue virginity and the religious life.

Most of the local female saints of Wales, like the more universal
saints popular in the high Middle Ages, fall into the category of the
virgin martyr. Significantly, however, a select group of Welsh female
saints differ from this virginal norm, being dependent instead on holy
maternity for their sanctity. In her third chapter, the author
discusses in detail the various Welsh and Breton accounts of the life
of St. Non, the mother of St. David. Although no Middle Welsh prose
life of St. Non survives, Cartwright considers other Welsh sources
mentioning the saint, surveying multiple historical sites, relics, and
church dedications associated with Sts. Non and David and analyzing
relevant episodes from St. David's Middle Welsh Life. She offers a
close comparison of the Welsh tradition of St. Non with a Breton
miracle play treating many of the same episodes, stressing the Welsh
devotion to the idea of holy kinship as the central reason for Non's
popularity as a maternal, non-virginal saint and also pointing out
that the narrative presence of rape in St. Non's maternal experience
ensures that she, like the Virgin Mary, can conceive without sexual
pleasure. St. Non's rape represents a necessary step in the birth of
Wales' patron saint; since the genealogical focus of Welsh
hagiography, with many native Welsh saints connected by descent, meant
an emphasis on holy maternity and kinship, this maternal saint could
join the ranks of sexually pure holy women as "a kind of honorary
virgin" (5).

Cartwright's fourth chapter turns from stories of native Welsh saints
to examine the Welsh versions of the lives of two internationally
popular female figures, Mary Magdalene and her sister Martha. The
stories of the two women appear together in several Welsh manuscripts,
usually accompanied by other female saints' lives: Cartwright
provides several tables detailing the manuscript settings of the
Middle Welsh Lives of Mary and Martha and discusses the variations of
the Welsh texts from standard hagiographies such as those in the
Legenda aurea. Noting that the Lives appear in manuscripts
alongside such secular tales as those of the Mabinogion,
Cartwright queries the extent to which we can assume that they were
produced for an audience of Welsh religious women. She stresses the
popularity of both saints' cults in the lay household, arguing that
Mary Magdalene in particular may have provided a more accessible role
model for Welsh noblewomen than many of the virgin martys. Both
saints' stories, however, highlight penitence and proper social
behavior, ensuring their popularity as intercessors with a mixed
audience of both men and women and of both conventual and lay
worshippers.

In her fifth chapter, Cartwright considers Welsh devotion to another
universally popular female saint, Katherine of Alexandria. The
chapter begins with an examination of visual representations of
Katherine that either survive or are mentioned in contemporary
accounts. In Wales as elsewhere, Katherine's cult enjoyed increasing
popularity in and after the fourteenth century: most of her surviving
images date from c.1350-1550. The saint, frequently depicted with
only one wheel instead of the usual three, appears in stained glass,
wall paintings, and statuary. The number of Welsh churches dedicated
to her indicates the strength of her cult there during the later
Middle Ages, while the seventeen copies of the Middle Welsh version of
Katherine's Life also attest to her popularity. Cartwright outlines
the similarity of the Welsh Life to a verse Life in Middle English
that survives in two fifteenth-century manuscripts, Cambridge,
University Library, MS Ff.2.38 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS
Rawlinson Poetry 34. Cartwright argues that the Welsh and English
versions must derive from a Latin exemplar that omits certain episodes
of the saint's life found in the standard vitae. Most
significantly, the Welsh Life does not mention Katherine's classical
education: instead of her learning providing the means of her
resistance to torture and prison, the strength of her faith gives her
the strength to stand firm. This change, Cartwright suggests, may
have been intended to make the saint appear less like a vowed
religious and more like a devout lay person. Again, she argues that
the Life's overall manuscript context points to an audience of lay
readers in the context of the Christian family.

Cartwright's focus on lay piety culminates in her sixth chapter which
examines the evidence for Welsh nunneries and the nature of female
religious life in medieval Wales. In contrast to the many convents
welcoming women in medieval England, post-Conquest Wales seems to have
had only three major houses for religious women and little provision
for wealthy women to become nuns even after their husbands' death.
Cartwright links this comparative dearth to a masculine view of women
as "corruptible virgins" (177), an image derived from two main
sources: the many secular poems (of which David ap Gwilym's are the
most well-known) enacting the seduction of religious women and the
emphasis in male religious discourse on the spiritual danger that
proximity to religious women poses to men. The poetry addressed to
cloistered female figures urged them to escape their enclosures for
the pleasures of earthly love, and monastic authorities portrayed the
same female figures as corrupting influences on their attendant
priests. From this low valuation of religious women expressed in
multiple (masculinist) media and also from the medieval laws
restricting female ownership of land, Cartwright deduces that Welsh
gentlewomen were more likely to express religious fervor through
private devotions than through embracing or contributing financially
to convent life.

This book represents a significant compendium of information for
scholars of female spirituality, medieval hagiography, and lay piety
in medieval Wales. Particularly helpful for non-readers (or slow
readers) of Welsh are the many unedited primary sources that
Cartwright quotes, translates, and analyzes. Her close attention to
the evidence of churches, holy wells, and the representation of female
saints in the visual arts rounds out her readings of the Middle Welsh
prose Lives of saints. The only flaw in the book's overall
presentation, an editing error that prints the numeral "6" instead of
the Welsh vowel "w" in several of the chapters (not all), can
admittedly be distracting. Ultimately, however, we can be glad that
Cartwright has brought together her writings on the subject of women
and religion in this accessible, useful volume.